Valve expands upon their plans for hardware, with Gabe Newell telling Kotaku they hope to begin selling appliance-style PCs next year to provide a turnkey way to play Steam games in the living room using the service's new Big Picture Mode. He explains this will help to unify two oddly defined environments:

"I think in general that most customers and most developers are gonna find that [the PC is] a better environment for them," Newell told me. "Cause they won't have to split the world into thinking about 'why are my friends in the living room, why are my video sources in the living room different from everyone else?' So in a sense we hopefully are gonna unify those environments."

Newell said he's expecting a lot of different companies to release these types of packages—"We'll do it but we also think other people will as well," he told me—and that Valve's hardware might not be as open-source or as malleable as your average computer.

"Well certainly our hardware will be a very controlled environment," he said. "If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that's what some people are really gonna want for their living room.

This is good for Valve. The Windows platform is a sinking ship, and Microsoft heading towards a walled garden. They are already locking out Steam from some flavors of Windows8. Windows 8 RT does not allow side loading of apps, so they can only be installed from Microsoft's app store, Steam not allowed. Value is not leaving Windows, but they are shifting their center of gravity by supporting Linux so they are not as dependent on Microsoft.

This new Steam box will no doubt run a flavor of Linux, which I think is why Value has announced future support for Linux. You will still be able to use Windows, or Linux, and probably even your own SteamBox (custom parts running Linux or Windows).